Ovadya ben Malka, a former member of the Birkenau Sonderkommando has approached Rabbi Ish-Shalom in search of atonement and absolution. Instead, the rabbi has told him that no atonement is possible; he must tell all that he remembers and pay his debt to the dead. In this excerpt, Ovadya finally breaches the silence that has engulfed him since Birkenau.
Ovadya ben Malka's writings on the shoah and memory
Moral Dilemmas in the Holocaust: Discussion topics for Jewish Book Clubs
Returning explores the questions faced by the Jewish Sonderkommando in Birkenau. When does death becomes a moral obligation? What is the nature of responsibility when all choices are taken from us? Can we do T’shuvah for acts committed under coercion? These are the questions that Ovadya still wrestles with decades later.
Priorities and Charity: A Sonderkommando’s lesson in humanity
Even when all that defines us is stripped away, one thing remains–the ability to help others. In extending a hand to another we save ourselves as well.
To be a Memory: Trauma and identity
It is a strange thing, to be a memory…. I write from a moment in my own past—from within my memories. In fact, I realize that I am my memories. I am everything that I remember up to this point in my life. I drift between the past and the future—living and dreaming and thinking in the past, but writing in my own future.
Parashat Balak and the Revival of the Dead
One of the lessons of Parashat Balak is that things aren’t always what they seem, that human intentions don’t always pan out the way we imagine, and that there is an overall scheme of things invisible to the limited sight of a single generation.
Israel: Forever coming home
What makes one decide to leave behind the comfort of familiar surroundings, one’s mother tongue, childhood friends and extended family… all to set up home in a faraway land? Each of us has our own story and our own reasons, but there are some things that we share. We’ve have built a thriving society out of the ashes of the worst that they could do to us, and whatever may come, we’re home.
Memories of an absent God
A sonderkommando questions the absence of God, and finds an unexpected answer.
Why International Holocaust Remembrance Day isn’t marked in Israel
It may seem ironic that International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place on the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, is not marked in Israel. And yet, considering the timing and character of the commemoration, Israel’s choice to pay tribute to the Shoah on a different anniversary is somehow appropriate.
The Revival of the Dead: A personal journey
We, in our age, are living through a miracle spelled out long ago. But, like most such miracles, those living through them very often don’t see them. Some of us have no choice but to see them; the miracle is bound up with our lives by an unremembered past.
Chade: The wild Canaan dog who made himself at home in our hearts
The first sign of his presence was a large canine footprint in the silt of the little fish pond. Crushed water plants and puzzled fish. A wild Canaan dog straight off the hills, he would go on to leave his footprints on our hearts.
